PRESSTON WORKERS HOUSING

At the downriver end of the Pressed Steel industrial complex, the company built two parallel streets of duplex housing leading to the river. These houses were crowded with immigrant workers in 1909, and the working-class community remains intact today. Evictions of immigrant workers from these houses provoked the most intense strike violence. Workers in the plant complained of a plantwide system of extortion. They had to pay to get a job and then pay to keep it. The system of company stores and housing regulated life beyond the gates of the factory and enforced a system of industrial servitude.

Father A.E. Toner the pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church wrote: “Men are persecuted, robbed and slaughtered, and their wives are abused in a manner worse than death .. .It is a pit of infamy where men are driven lower than the degradation of slaves and forced to sacrifice their wives and daughters to the villainous foreman … to be allowed to work. It is a disgrace to a civilized country. A man is given less consideration than a dog and dead bodies are simply kicked aside while men are literally driven to their death.” The role of the churches in building the community are still evident in the spires and domes of the Slovak, Ukrainian Orthodox, Ukrainian Catholic, Russian Orthodox, the Rusyn Byzantine Catholic churches that rise over the “Bottoms” forming one of the most unique urban landscapes in the entire region.

Marker at Ohio & Center Streets, Presston, Stowe Township